Unique Books and Literary Gifts

Founded in 2011, Notting Hill Editions is an independent British publisher of beautiful and collectable books for the curious reader.

My Katherine Mansfield Project

by Kirsty Gunn

When Kirsty Gunn received a Randell Fellowship from the British Academy and Carnegie Foundation in 2009 she returned to spend the winter in Wellington, near the childhood home of Katherine Mansfield, the writer to whom she’d always felt most connected. In this lyrical essay, Gunn explores the ideas of home and belonging – and of her own deep connection to a place where every flower and gatepost seems embroidered with the memory of some story or another.

View: My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn

Midlife: Humanity’s Secret Weapon

by Andrew Jamieson

Only two species of mammal have an extensive, post-reproductive life: killer whales – whose elders can sniff out food for their pods – and Homo sapiens. While the rationale behind the whale’s longevity seems clear, what is the point of ours? This question intrigued Carl Jung who observed that if a culture is to thrive, it must find a balance between the energy of the young and the experience of the old. But to obtain this equilibrium, we need to pass through the dreaded middle years. Examining the Jungian concept of the midlife crisis, and the lives of prominent figures who endured it, psychoanalyst Andrew Jamieson shows how there is an evolutionary purpose behind this rite of passage which – once traversed – holds the key to our prosperity.

View: Midlife: Humanity’s Secret Weapon by Andrew Jamieson

Thus Spake Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche Michael Hulse Joanna Kavenna

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s infamous protagonist sets off on a grand and noble quest to find meaning in a secular world and to live joyfully alongside the knowledge of death. In this new translation by Michael Hulse – the first in English by a poet – Zarathustra is revealed in all his bold and ironic splendour as a man who prizes self worth above all else as a moral code to live by. Radical, uncategorisable, contradictory and often humorous, Thus Spake Zarathustra is a grand celebration of human existence by one of the most influential thinkers of the past two centuries.

View: Thus Spake Zarathustra by Joanna Kavenna